apo-wiki

Attending: Nancy Chanover (NMSU),

Aleksandr Mosenkov (BYU), Russet McMillan (APO), Anne Verbiscer (UVa), Adam Kowalski (CU), Misty Bentz (GSU), Ben Williams (UW), Moire Prescott (NMSU), Joanne Hughes (Seattle U), Chip Kobulnicky (UWy), Michael Hayden (OU), Eric Bellm (UW), Sarah Tuttle (UW), Bill Ketzeback (APO), Gordon MacDonald (APO)

• NMSU - nothing to report
• Washington - nothing to report other than general interest in the timetable for the KOSMOS repair
• UVa - nothing to report
• Colorado -
• BYU - nothing to report
• Georgia State - nothing to report
• Oklahoma - nothing to report
• Wyoming - nothing to report other than general interest in the timetable for the KOSMOS repair
• JHU - nothing to report
• Seattle -
• Colgate - no report
• Williams -

The detailed site report is included below, followed by additional information discussed during today's meeting.

3.5-m Telescope and Instruments Highlights, 10/08/25 – 12/02/25

1) Overview

This report spans two months, as the November meeting was cancelled due to its conflict with the ARC Board of Governors meeting.

The first half of October experienced very unsettled weather, while the second half of the month through the middle of November had beautifully clear skies. The latter part of November again was nearly weathered out, and we saw our first light snowfalls of the season.

We had three class visits during this time period: (NMSU) mid-October, (UVa) end of October, and (NAPG) mid-November. Russet McMillan and Amanda Townsend are currently sharing training responsibilities. We had a visiting PI Instrument observing run early in November.

2) Operations

3.5m Telescope: Telescope is working as expected. Seasonal motion errors continue to occur infrequently. We anticipate that some tuning of the axis drives will be necessary soon with the cooling weather. The failures have not increased as expected so far. There was an instance of a motor amplifier fault on the tertiary mirror actuator in mid-October. It was corrected by homing the mirror and restarting the mirror controller software.

0.5m Telescope: Telescope is working as expected. Dcam-spare and UVAcam are both available options for users. Additional testing of BYUcam was performed during some available engineering time. The water spots were cleaned from Dcam-spare, and the chamber repressurized with gaseous nitrogen.

KOSMOS: System is cold and stable. Repaired the cold strapping and reassembled the cryostat near the end of October. A month later, we experienced dewing on the cryostat window, which was dried and waterspots cleaned using purge air.

ARCTIC: The diffuser rotation mechanism is still unreliable even after a full servicing. The mechanism that moves the diffuser in and out of the optical path is still functional in the meantime. There was an instance where the controller locked up, making exposures impossible. Resetting led to a quadrant drop. Recovery was not as smooth as expected, and the cryostat was put on a vacuum pump for a day to allow the ion pump to latch. There was one instance where the filter wheel controller required a restart because it was unable to receive commands. The restart occurred during afternoon checkout, and no time was lost.

Agile / SoonerCam: The Agile camera is non-operational due to a failed thermoelectric cooler. The camera and ICC are currently powered down. The camera is warm and no further repair work is scheduled because we plan to decommission the camera. The Agile instrument rotator is still not performing nominally, and we will be troubleshooting it further to prepare for SoonerCam. SoonerCam parts are on hand, and assembly and software development will begin after the first of the new year.

ARCES: As reminder to all ARCES users, we discovered that the FITS header keyword for DATE-OBS was incorrect by approximately 45 minutes, indicating a future time when an image was written. The problem began on or after August 27, 2024. If time stamps are important for your echelle observations, please take note.

DIS: System is powered down and warm. Decommissioning plans have begun.

NICFPS: System is cooled and usable.

TripleSpec: System is cooled and usable.

APOLLO: The instrument is usable for laser ranging. The observing team hit 6 reflectors on two different observational nights — well done! The instrument had been experiencing some issues with its cooling water flow. Kinked water lines to the laser were identified and repaired.

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The Q4 schedule is posted. There is a fair amount of OPEN/DD01 time in late October (dark time, all B halves). We hope to use some of it to pay back KOSMOS users who had to give up their time but we're not committing to that until we know when KOSMOS will be returning. Some of the scheduled KOSMOS time may need to be allocated to other users, ideally from the same institution. There is additional OPEN/DD01 time later in quarter, including a limited number of A halves or partial A halves. A huge thank you to Russet for doing such a great job with the challenging schedule for this quarter.

The Q1 schedule is in the works.

The ARCSAT Q4 schedule is posted. It is pretty full, but there is some time available later in the quarter. The two available instruments are UVa-cam (larger FOV) and Dcam-spare (smaller FOV and less oversampled). Dcam-spare did have some frost on the window after shutdown; it is gone now but we can still see signatures of it on the detector. They flat-field out but the frames look ugly when taking data.

• SoonerCam: Parts have been trickling in. So far we received the fiber and software developer's kit but we're still waiting on the fiber to coaxpress converters. We will dig into this after early November.
• KOSMOS grisms (no change from last month): we are still awaiting a decision on the proposal we submitted for funds to support the purchase of three new grisms for KOSMOS.
• ASPEN: We recently learned that a proposal we submitted for funds to support the development of the new echelle spectrograph was not selected for funding. Work on the design of the new optical echelle spectrograph continues with the goal of completing the Preliminary Design Review in early spring 2026. We are hosting an ASPEN team meeting at APO and NMSU this week.
• Ocotillo: The vibration stabilization bench and optical table have been delivered, along with the enclosure. We are starting to get optical mounting parts and a student is working on the software and data side. Late this week the fibers should arrive, and the optics will be coming in next few weeks, including the grating. Sarah plans to submit an NSF ATI proposal for the robot side of the third channel.

• SoonerCam: Parts have been trickling in. So far we received the fiber and software developer's kit but we're still waiting on the fiber to coaxpress converters. We will dig into this after early November.
• KOSMOS grisms (no change from last month): we are still awaiting a decision on the proposal we submitted for funds to support the purchase of three new grisms for KOSMOS.
• ASPEN: We recently learned that a proposal we submitted for funds to support the development of the new echelle spectrograph was not selected for funding. Work on the design of the new optical echelle spectrograph continues with the goal of completing the Preliminary Design Review in early spring 2026. We are hosting an ASPEN team meeting at APO and NMSU this week.
• Ocotillo: The vibration stabilization bench and optical table have been delivered, along with the enclosure. We are starting to get optical mounting parts and a student is working on the software and data side. Late this week the fibers should arrive, and the optics will be coming in next few weeks, including the grating. Sarah plans to submit an NSF ATI proposal for the robot side of the third channel.

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Open action items from previous meetings:

• Nancy/Sarah: follow up with Jim Davenport about the status of PyKOSMOS and report back.
• Joanne Hughes: put the KOSMOS MOS data reduction software on the wiki.
• UC reps: remind your users to review the Q4 schedule and request OPEN/DD01 time if they can make a good case for it.

New action items from this meeting:

• xxxx

We discussed the timeline of events that led to the temperature issues for KOSMOS. In January 2025 the chip temperature increased. Data taken in late winter and early spring were probably not affected, but users started to notice the issue in the mid/late spring.

Gordon is working on a new release for TUI (v3.2), which will be coming out soon. The new version cleaned out some old scripts and removed the option of selecting instruments that are being decommissioned. The most exciting aspect is that he is working on packaging to make the software installation process more simple for users, especially students. Although we encourage users to stay current with their TUI versions, older versions of the software will still work.

Propose same general day/time (first Tuesday of the month at 10:30 MT); push January meeting one week later? Jan 13 Feb 03 Mar 03 Apr 07 May 05 Jun 02 Jul 07 Aug 04 Sep 01 Oct 06 Nov 03 Dec 01